Anchor and Chain
by Meredith T. Tasaki
Summary: Post season 3, for the sgaflashfic Strange New Worlds and Alien Geographies challenge. Celestial navigation, pterodactyls, and naming rights. The very light in this place might be a constant reminder that they're not home.


Anchor and Chain

Rating: G, no pairings (not if you don't want them, at any rate)

Spoilers: Takes place sometime after the third season's finale, after the requisite season-ending crisis has, somehow or other, been resolved.

Summary: Celestial navigation, pterodactyls, and naming rights. The very light in this place might be a constant reminder that they're not home.

Notes: Now that I can actually access the sgaflashfic site, it seems I may have been sucked in. -considers- Awesome.

To those curious about celestial navigation: longitude is arbitrary; to measure it, you need a starting-point (also utterly arbitrary, which is probably how ours ended up in Greenwich), a good clock, and a fairly good knowledge of how (and when) the sky usually looks at your starting point. Latitude, though, isn't arbitrary; all you need to do is watch the sky long enough to find the spot all the stars seem to rotate around. If it's right above your head, you're at the pole. If it's on the horizon, you're at the equator. If it's 25 degrees above the horizon, you're at 25 degrees latitude. Feel free to go and do sonething useful with this information.

Oh, and I'm somewhat new to posting fics on LJ (and I haven't been in SGA that long, either), so please forgive me (and let me know!) if I get anything wrong.

-

The astronomers in the hallway were saying that this star is smaller than the sun, or Atlantis' sun, and they said something about how much smaller, but who besides an astronomer has any idea what mass means on that scale? He took some astronomy class in college, but all he remembers is that the numbers were enormous; vast, incomprehensible.

And even the astronomers probably couldn't tell him offhand what he wants to know-- whether the color will be different, or the angles; whether the sun will be up higher in the sky; whether the very light in this place is going to be so different that it's a constant reminder that they're not home.

Though probably it doesn't matter, he remembers, as he steps outside; whether it is or it isn't, there are going to be more than enough reminders to go around. The sea here (which seemed a lot grayer than it ought to, from the sky at any rate) smells fairly strongly of salt and chlorine and something else he can't identify, and, though it isn't very unpleasant, doesn't want to. Could be something in the water... could be from the mainland... could be the blue pterodactyls. There's something seriously unnerving about the blue pterodactyls; maybe it's some sort of racial memory.

"And hello to you too," Rodney gripes, though his voice sounds too tired to be truly acerbic. He's staring at the stars; he's actually lying there staring at the stars. Somehow it's just not something John ever would have expected of him.

"Well, it's not like you had a neon sign," he counters, sitting down next to him. "It's kind of hard to notice you're there without the constant chatter."

"And of course that couldn't possibly be why I do it. It isn't, of course, but I find it telling the possibility didn't even occur to you. Is there a reason you're out here?"

"Just wanted to get the lay of the land," he answers, not letting McKay ruffle him. He senses the incredulous stare and amends, "Or-- the sky, anyway. Whatever you can actually see out here... at night."

"Right." He can practically hear the eye-rolling, which is probably a bad sign for his future peace of mind. "What exactly do you think you're going to see? Are you working on finally naming a constellation after Daffy Duck?"

"I was thinking Bugs Bunny. Actually, I was working on directions. Have you been out here a while?"

"A little--"

"Where are the stars rising?" Really, McKay should be quicker on the uptake than this; the most notable feature of this particular balcony is the relatively unobstructed view it affords of the sky. Sure, there's still the tower behind you, but it's high enough here and the balcony's far enough out that almost everything else is clear.

A sigh. "Over there," he says, gesturing to the left and a little forward.

"So, east. Which would make that west, which means we're facing south. Found the pole yet?"

There's a short pause, and a sigh. "Of course you'd know something about stellar cartography. Yes. I have. It's over there." He gestures vaguely-- too vaguely to really read, but it's somewhere forward and toward the horizon.

"So, southern hemisphere, closer to the equator than I thought. Is there a pole star, by any chance?"

"Not bright enough to see, but it's fairly close to that blue one."

He squints in that direction, and brightens. "Hey, Southern Cross!"

"Oh, that looks nothing _like_ a cross! I can't believe you'd impose an utterly inaccurate name-- not that any constellations remotely resemble _anything_, much less what they're named for-- just to assuage some, some _ridiculous_ sense of--"

"Already named it, huh?"

Rodney sulks, but not for very long. "It is quite clearly an anchor."

John tilts his head, and he can see it; the arms really are too short to be a proper cross, and there are three or four bright stars at the bottom that do make a lopsided curve.

"Not only is it clearly an anchor, using that analogy means we can designate that string of blue stars as a chain, making it easy to explain that the southern celestial pole is quite close to the third star in the silver chain."

That actually is useful-- and that's not what's surprising him, that it's useful; it's that McKay _saw_ it. Not to mention there's a tang of creativity to the entire enterprise of constellation-naming that he has no (un)earthly reason to have a knack for. "Anchor and chain?"

"Ironically," says Rodney, "I never could stand travelling."

It's perfect, he realizes then; it's utterly perfect. "Okay," he says. "But I get to name the moons."

"Oh, god, no. They'll bring the new recruits from the _Daedalus_ and how will we get them to take Pegasus seriously if we have to tell them the moons are named-- Gary, and Carl, and Billy Ray, and _Joe Bob_?"

"What's wrong with Joe Bob? And _come on_," he plows ahead, before Rodney can explain (because god knows he will), "what would _you_ have us do-- all mythological names and Shakespeare, like back home? Dido and Ariadne and Cordelia and Ophelia? Yeah, that's _much_ better."

"I seem to notice a theme there," says Rodney.

John doesn't answer, just stares at the sky, looking for constellations. Maybe there's a mood you have to get into, because he's been good at this before, but tonight he can't find any patterns at all.

Rodney hums a verse of "Southern Cross" almost too quietly to be heard, and a warm sea breeze settles heavily over them, and there's a faint, grating call from the mainland.

"Well," Rodney says, and gets to his feet. "This has all been very pleasant, but some of us have actual work to do."

"Oh yeah? And what work is that?" Even though he knows Rodney isn't lying.

"Structural damage," he says, ticking it off on his fingers. "Recalibrating the Stargate. Getting our location to the _Daedalus_. Sending a message to the SGC. Making sure the city's desalinization tanks can handle this water. Making sure there's nothing in the air that will slowly kill us all. Checking the mainland for intelligent life. Checking the mainland for edible life. Checking the sea for both of the above. Checking the current food supply of those giant blue pterodactyls. Making sure there's nothing in the air that will compound any damage we might already have and compromise the city's structural integrity, thus resulting in our deaths when the giant pterodactyls decide to nest on the central tower and, after surviving the collapse, feed our broken bodies to their young. That and a hundred other things, added on top of the not inconsiderable list we already had."

"Yeah, I know," says John. "'Feed our broken bodies to their young'?"

"Have you seen the size of those things? If they're carnivores, it's a perfectly plausible scenario. Besides, it is entirely beside the point, and why do you insist on asking me irritating questions if you know the answers perfectly well?"

"Probably just because it's fun to hear you chatter."

"Because, as we've gone over, it's the best way to tell that I'm there." But Rodney isn't making anything of that-- not out loud, at any rate, and John's not in a mood to look gift horses in the mouth. "Have fun turning random patterns of stars into vague representations of crass pop culture icons."

"Will do."

John listens to McKay's footsteps fading away, tries not to become nervous at the sight of a pterodactyl-shadow lumbering its way over the eastern shore, and stays under the muggy blanket of the strange sea air until Gary rises and the anchor dips into the western sea.


End file.
